The Big Scan
The Epson 2400 scanner I got on the bay arrived today. Couldn’t wait to figure out anything or clean it up to try it with the 4×5 adaper. So out came a blaw neg, and scan away I did. Without further ado…
4x5 ngative scan downsized for the web
I did nothing to this scan but downsize it to 100ppi.
The radio slave trigger I have been waiting on arrived today as well. Sadly it does not seem to want to work with the Norman P808m power pack. It would with my toy flashes, or at least the Vivitar 283, but I specifically wanted it to connect the power pack & heads studio strobe to my digicam. I emailed the seller a quiry to see if he knows whether it is supposed to work with the Norman or not.
This also seems to be my week for medical stuff. I saw the neurologist today, I have to drive down to Charlotte for the dentist tomorrow, then the next day I see my therapist, and Thursday I get an MRI done. So I have the holiday week end off however.
Let There Be Light
A new toy arrived today.
Norman 808
That is a Norman 800W/S power pack with two heads. The stands and umbrellas I already had. I checked it out by hitting the test button and it seems to work properly. It is one of those that they are selling on ebay with the number 3 socket disabled. I figured that it would be easy to fix thet. However a quick look inside says otherwise. Oh well I can get by with three heads.
That of course means I have to get another head. The heads with it did not have modeling bulbs in them, so I had ordered a couple at the same time I bought the outfit. My luck holding true, one of the bulbs was dead. What I paid for two was a bargain, for one it was not. Hopefully the seller will send me a replacement.
I bought a cheap radio slave unit from an ebay seller as well. They did not mention that they only ship on Monday and Thursday until after I paid for it. Save yourself a few bucks and order one from Hong Kong it will not take any longer to get to you. I need the slave setup to use the outfit with my digital camera.
I have about given up on fixing the 200b strobes. I have traced out the wiring harness and find no problem there. I started on the circuit board but between my lack of concentration and the fact I have not worked as a bench technician for about 50 years it seems a lost cause. I used them as my main lights, a Vivitar 283 as my background light and an little Vivitar 2600 as a kicker for many years. Plus the Norman 200B is handy when you need lots of light from an on camera flash.
I have a scanner coming to go with the 4×5 film adapter I got awhile back. I think I mentioned my idea of processing the negatives from the Graphic and then scanning them in and printing them; setting up the bathroom darkroom to do prints being such and onerous task these days. I was kind of thinking of setting up the old R200 printer with the 6 black cartridges for B&W printing.
Then I have to do something about setting up portrait backgrounds. And it would be a good idea to build a large reflector panel or two. That is the thing about Photography, even if you no longer need to buy film, although I do for the Graphic, there is always something you need to spend money for.
I hope I get everything together in the next couple of weeks as I have a friend who needs an executive headshot done. I did not expect to have a deadline when I started thinking about doing a bit of serious photography again.
More thoughts on the Norman 200B problem
It bothers me that both units are acting the same. It is kind of hard to believe that the same thing when wrong with both of them at the same time. It almost makes me feel that I did something wrong in wiring the battery packs. Only they are dead simple. The red wire is positive, the gray negative, and the black is the thermal cut off that goes to negative when the battery hits a predetermined temperature. Since there is no thermal relay on the SLA the black wire is not connected.
I kind of thought that it might be a corrosion problem so I used Deoxit on all the terminals, switches and connectors. I put the unit back together and it still does not work. I have decided to leave the battery on float over night. I do know that the strobe has a cut off circuit if the battery voltage goes below a certain level, but I have no idea what that is in particular. I kind of doubt that is the problem because the batteries are above 13 volts.
If making sure the batteries are fully changed does not fix it, I guess I will have to do som serious trouble shooting. Google gives “Crap!”. In the old days it gave a lot of responses, but now it seems to give sites with google advertising instead. I know the information is out there a couple of links came up kind of through the back door, I was searching for something else. Maybe if I searched for old stuff it would work better.
If anyone knows where I could get a service manual for these, please let me know.
Norman 200B needs work.
Well those sealed lead acid batteries I ordered frinally came. I rigged up connection harnesses for them. Charged them on the charger I aready had, the Norman Charger did not work too well, but the $20 Walmart 1.5 amp charger worked fine.
Then, I put the batteries in the strobes. NOTHING! No ready light, no whine, no flash. I tried all the possible combinations of 2 power packs, 2 batteries, and 3 heads. Still nothing. Finally I opened one of the power packs. The foam blocks that supported the coil and capacitor had turned into muck.
Inside the Norman 200B Strobe
As you can see from the above photo, the unit is rather simple. 2 400uf/500v and 1 800uf/500v capacitors, a toroid transformer, a couple of transistors, some diodes, and miscellaneous hardware. The toroid is the only thing critical, all the other parts are off the shelf items.
It will take a bit of trouble shooting to determine exactly what is wrong with it (I already checked the fuse, thank you). Then I will have to decide whether I want to go to the trouble an expense of repairing the things. They are handy to have. I could convert them to low-voltage sync while I was at it. It would even be possible to replace the capacitors and convert them to 400 watt/second units.
On the other hand I just bought a Norman 808 pack with a couple of heads from the bay. I have a couple of Vivitars that work OK, and the Oly I just got, so I am kind of strobe poor right now.
As I messed with these today, I noticed that I had re-celled the batteries way back in 1999, That was ten years ago; and the note on the battery packs said I had done something to them in ‘95. I remember I bought them very used back sometime before that. They were working fine a couple of years ago when I last used them. Since then they have just been in a box of strobe stuff. These things were made to last and take a beating while working their butts off.
I noticed that there is a guy who rebuilds these as 400W/S units for $650 bucks, so if I was to do that I would surely increase their value (currently maybe $100 for the bunch as parts). On the other hand, I am kind of lazy…
Photos to go with previous post
I thought I might just post a few photos to illustrate what I was writing about in the previous post. None of the flash test photos have been adjusted for exposure so you can see what the differences may be.
No flash shot
That shot is my bedroom mirror without flash. Notice how flash tames the glare from the ceiling lights in the following photos.
FL-40 Only
That one is the FL-40 flash bounced straight up without the on camera flash.
Camera Slave Triggrer Only
That one is of the slave trigger only. Note it is very low intensity, and there is no auto exposure control. It is meant to trigger the slave and provide a catchlight in the eyes only.
283 slave on bracket
That one is of the Vivitar 283 setup with a slave trigger and bounced at 60 degrees toward the ceiling.
I wish I had done one of the Olympus FL-40 bouced at 60 degrees instead of 90 degree, but I think you can see what is going on. Refer back to the previous post for more details.
Window Shade Seamless Background
This is one of the window shade background photos. It is the same direct flash as the one in the previous article. I did nothing but adjust the exposure level in Photoshop. I think you would agree, I could use this photo to sell the hobby vise on eBay with no problem. Needless to say if I had adjusted the exposure for this type of image from the camera it would be even better quality.
Smarter than me
I bought an Olympu FL-40 electronic flash unit for my Olympus C-5050Z digital camera.. It is a very sophisticated flash. In fact it is so sophisticated that on that camera the on flash controls do not even work. No manual. No semi-automatic. Just camera controlled TTL flash. Now this is a very smart camera. But it figures I am too dumb to know how to take photos, so it has hundreds of options to do it the way the designer thinks it should be done. The only problem with that is that sometimes I want to do it differently. With 55+ years of taking photos, I often know several ways of achieving the effect that I want. The camera designers most likely never took a photo in their life, the boss just handed them a book on basic photography and told them to program the camera to do all those things.
The end result is that I have to dig through that 300 page manual to find out how to tell the camera to do something that I know how to do without even thinking about it. Am I the only one who finds this kind of thing annoying?
I guess I should not complain because when I bought he camera used I got a bargain on it because, “The remote control never did work”. In fact, the remote function is turned off by default, but you do not know that until you dig through that 300 page reference manual. Now, the reason I bought that Olympus flash unit is because my existing flashes, I have several, all have high voltage sync and I did not want to stick one in the hotshoe. While digging through that quan-damned manual I noticed that there is a slave flash mode. I had noticed it in the menus but it did not seem to work, but now I have figured out that it is only available in A or M (aperture preferred, or manual) modes. With that turned on I can put my Vivitar 283 on the Stroboframe bracket and plug the slave into it. Pop, I get the flash photo without having to worry about blowing the camera into next week. So, I could have saved the $85 I paid for the FL-40. But in the end that is probably why they do it that way.
Cheap Seamless
On the flash scene, I bought a very cheap window shade and mounted it behind the kitchen table where I can roll it down and across the table. Presto a seamless background for product photos at the insane cost of <$6. The shot above was done with on camera flash just to see how it works. With multiple flach and a overexposing the background it will pretty much disappear. I am thinking of getting a big shade and mounting it upstairs as a pull down portrait backdrop.
Death of a Camera
One of my film cameras is dead. I got them out to check them. My primary Pentax MX mirror is no longer instant return, and the shutter is slooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
About the worst thing that can happen to a camera is to just set in its bag in the closet for years. I guess I am lucky the other MX, amd the Crown Graphic seem to work fine. I really need to run some film throught them just to keep them in shape. I just remembered there is a Canonet RF in a dresser drawer that I ought to check as well.
I also found that the Norman 200B flash units batteries are dead dead dead as well. Damn things cost $135 each to replace and the current ones will not work with the old charger. I may try to use some SLA emergency exit light batteries. They are about he correct physical size to fit and I have an small charger to charge them with. They will cost me about $20 each in pairs (for the two strobes) with shipping. If that does not work, look for a couple of beat up 200b’s on ebay, real soon now. I am also thinking about how to mount modeling lights on them so I can use them for product photography. I had not been using them because they have 200 volts across the sync terminals and I am afraid to connect them to the Olympus C-50505Z, although Olympus says that 400 volts is Ok. I think they use a SCR to trigger external flash units. I just bought an Olypus flash unit from eBay that should be here in about a week, and I see that you can now get radio slave systems for very little money (<$20).
As you can no doubt tell, my mind is turning towards photography, and I would like to do some shooting. I especially like using the Graphic 4×5 Press Camera. I noticed that I have two film holders with exposed film and one with two sheets of unexposed film in them. I guess I should shoot off those two sheets and process the six negatives. I also have an unopenned box of film in the fridge. I did get that film attachment for older Epson scanners that will work with 4×5. I need to find a reasonalbly priced Epson scanner to use it with. It appears that the 2400 is the newest one that it is garaunteed to work with. I want to be sure the scanner has a USB 2.0 or firewire connection.
I did a few digital shots of the old bicycle today. Just snapshots to show the current state of the bike before I
Me olde Dunny as it is today
finally get around to putting the full coverage chain case on it. Or I should say try to put it on as there is no factory mounting points for it on the bike, so i have to fabricate something. I picked up some aluminum bar stock the other day that I hope will work out. I suspect that I will have to fabricate mounts out of steel and braze them on the frame. That will be difficult because I have nothing to braze them on with.
I also played with the new printer a bit today. I did some tests an think it works best if I set it for the printer to determine the colors with ICM, setting it for the color profile I am using in Photoshop and the one closeist to the paper I am using (I am using neither Epson inks nor paper so it is a case of best guess). I did print a cropped self-protrait that is about the same as an uncropped 13×19 from the digicam. It is barely OK. Nothing like great. I guess 4.9 megapixels is a bit small especially with it is a 3:4 image that will have to be cropped the short way to fit the long way. My usual 7.5×10 images are sharper than with the old R200 peinter.
Review of eBay Continuous Ink Supply System (CISS)
If you do much inkjet printing you probably have noticed those cheap, compared to the manufacturers’ ink cartridges, CIS systems on eBay and have wondered if they were any good. As mentioned in a previous post I recently obtained an Epson Stylus Photo 1400 printer on sale. When I checked the price of ink cartridges for it, I almost had a heart attack. The local Staples store, where I bought the printer, gets $23.99 each. That is a total of $133.94 + tax for a set, or $143.99.
So off to eBay I went. For $40.99 I got a CISS with ink. The seller has an excellent feedback rating but he was a bit slow in communications, shipping, and follow up. Not terribly so, usually responded in a couple of days, but there are lots of sellers who do better.
Photo of CISS from sellers eBay listing
When the unit finally arrived there was a lot of air in the lines. The instructions say to contact the seller if there was more han 20cm of air, there was definitely more than than in the black line and most of the other lines were close to that; so I sent off another email. That one was not answered at all; so much for after the sale service from that seller. I used instructions from the web for removing bubbles in the ink lines. That was kind of messy.
Mess made getting excess air out of ink lines
The above is an image of a print. My original photos of the installation were lost due to a stupidity caused loss of the raid partition they were in.
The installation into the printer was pretty straight forward after that. I, like many others, was not able to get the ink cover off without breaking the right side hinge pin. Well, I did not want a warranty on the printer anyway.
CISS ink carts in printer
How ink lines are run for the CISS
How does it work. Quite well actually.
CISS setup with test print
As you can see the test print of a color calibration image is pretty good. The two identical prints below were printed with the CISS and on the old Epson R200 respectively
Some small test prints
They show that the image from new printer with the CISS is sharper and very slightly warmer than the image from the old printer using Epson inks. I did not use the ink cartridges that came with the printer, as I plan to sell them to recover the cost of the CISS.
Of course none of this says anything about long term reliability, nor print life. As for reliability, if it only lasts one ink load it is far, far cheaper than using Epson inks. If it lasts longer than that, the seller is offering ink refill sets for only $25 which will reduce ink cost even more. Print life will not likely be as good as with the Epson inks, but then the real advantage of digital imaging is that you can simply print a duplicate at any time.
So, with only limited use, I think the CISS was a worthwhile modification. How I feel about it six months or a year from now you will have to wait and see. Health withstanding, I will provide those reports.
New Printer and Hot Swap Module
I bought an Epson Stylist Photo 1400 printer on sale last week. After doing a bit or research I ordered a CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) for it from eBay. Interestingly, while there is a lot of old information on CISS’s out there, there is very little current stuff that I could find. There are the big three, Ink Republic, Media Street, and Lyson with very expensive systems, and a lot cheap made in Asia systems, Back in 2005-06 the Asian systems were apparently pretty crappy. I would guess they have improved and the prices certainly gone down. The one I just paid for cost $40.99 with ink and free shipping. Which is a real bargain when you realize that new Epson 79 series ink cartridges cost $23.99 each locally and the printer takes six of them. I will put up a short review once I have used the CISS for a bit.
*****
I also have gotten a five bay hot swap drive module for the computer. Along with the two SAS drives, I believe I mentioned previously, it gives me two fast drives for the OS, and the existing three 500gb SATA drives in a RAID-5 array for data, all hot swappable. Unfortunately I seem to be having a bit of a problem with the hot swap module. One of the LED’s is not working properly. I may have to send it back for a replacement. The module is a Norco SS-500 I bought from newegg.com. It seems to be very well designed, but somewhat lacking in quality control like a lot of products these days. I want to do a couple of more checks before I actually start the RMA (Returned Merchandise Authorization) procedure.
Once this is all sorted out I intend to make the SAS drives my boot drives giving all Windows and software access a pretty good boost in performance as the SAS drives are 15000 rpm SCSI drives in a hardware RAID-1 configuration. I guess I should mention that the drives are all working fine in the hot swap module, it is just one LED that is not working properly.
ADDED: Checked out things some more and the H/S module seems to be OK. Apparently the LED’s do not work with SAS drives. I wonder why they say it is compatible with SAS drives right on the box?
Problem with Comments
I want to apologise to those who have posted comments that seem to have disappeared into limbo.
Somehow the settings got changed and I have not been receiving the emails notifying me that there were comments to approve. Hopefully I have gotten that fixed.
It is not my policy to censor comments. However, I do have heavy duty spam filters in place. Unfortunately that is a necessity in today’s internet environment. I also delete duplicate postings. The spam filters occasionally get a valid comment (especially if there are links in it), I try to catch those but but if I don’t get to it in a week the anti-spam stuff deletes it. Other than that I approve all comments posted.
So, once again, if you have posted a comment on my blogs in the past couple of months and it did not show up, I am sorry. I will try to keep up with things better from now on.